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Women's Equality Day:

OWL ED Accepts #ALSIceBucketChallenge 

 

On August 26th, OWL celebrated Women's Equality Day, the anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment. OWL Executive Director challenged missing women to vote in the November midterms and elect members of congress who will adequately allocate research funds needed to cure debilitating diseases. 


Watch the video here

Congratulations to Former OWL Board Member, Daniella Levine

Former OWL board member Daniella Levine Cava defeats incumbent to take seat on Miami Dade County Commission - only the third time in the commission's history that an incumbent was defeated. See more here.

 

 

  

KFF Offers Interactive Tool for Medicare Beneficiaries

 

New interactive tool from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows the income and assets of Medicare beneficiaries now and in the future. See the tool here.

 

 

 

 Women see success via Kickstarter

 

Women are doing better on Kickstarter than men, with 69.5% success in getting funded vs. 61.4% for men; analysis shows it was not the women's more modest financial goals that accounted for their higher rate of success. More information here. 

  

   

 

WomenHeart

 

The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease is accepting applications for its three-day symposium in October at the Mayo Clinic that trains women to run community-based patient support groups. Go here for more information on how to register.




CBO revises Medicare spending projections

This week, the Congressional Budget Office released updated projections for the Medicare program to find that spending is expected to be $62 billion less than the agency predicted in April. This could also have major implications for the federal budget. For more on the revised projections, click here.


White House Conference on Aging Director to Speak at OWL's Fall Meeting

white house close up
Nora Super, the recently appointed executive director of the 2015 White House Conference on Aging, will be speaking at the October 11th OWL meeting.  It's particularly fitting that we hear from her; OWL was founded in 1980 following a mini-conference on aging held prior to the White House conference and will celebrate its 35th anniversary next year. OWL has already been engaged in planning the 2015 event, participating in the first White House round-table discussion as well as the Leadership Council on Aging Organization's recent conference session.

 

The fall meeting, which is free and open to the public, runs from 11:00 - 12:30 p.m. and is being held at Hyde Park's Hyatt Place Chicago-South/University Medical Center, 5225 S. Harper Ave. In addition to Ms. Super, we will hear from Christina Swoope, a policy analyst for the Kaiser Family Foundation. Also invited speak is SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet.

 

The theme of the meeting reflects our current campaign: "Our Women Mean Business: Encore Careers after 40."  With more than nine million women-owned businesses in the country, and women starting over 1,200 new businesses per day -- double the rate from three years ago -- they are a powerful force in the economy. "Our Women Mean Business" is designed to encourage and support these entrepreneurs.

 

Please RSVP to [email protected]


 
OWL and Sewall-Belmont Launch Campaign to Engage 22 Million Missing Women Voters


Women may consistently register and vote in higher percentages than men, but 22 million women who were eligible to vote sat out the November 2010 mid-term election. That's why OWL, along with the Sewall-Belmont House & Museum, is launching a campaign to encourage these women to vote. With experts predicting record-low turnout for the midterm elections, each additional vote carries more weight.


It's important because women tend to have a different perspective on politics. A bipartisan September 2012 survey by pollsters Celinda Lake and Kellyanne Conway found that regardless of political affiliation, 80 percent of women agreed on 80 percent of the issues. They also tended to support efforts to build consensus, solve problems and bring private and public interests together.

"Women feel the impact of decisions made by Congress more than men," said OWL Executive Director Bobbie Brinegar. "We have the most to gain and the most to lose when elected officials don't think we're paying attention. Voting in November is the best way to make sure they know that we are."

Combine the ground-breaking research by UC San Diego that found personal social media messages can motivate people to vote with the fact that 76 percent of all women use Facebook, and there is a cost-effective and efficient way to try and reach women who have otherwise not been engaged.

A key part of OWL's campaign will be enlisting a broad-based coalition to ask women, as they vote, to change their profile picture to this iconic postage stamp and tag three friends to do the same. OWL intends to use its partnership with National Voter Registration Day, September 23, to share its initiative with the hundreds of other partner organizations and individuals. 


"The women who won the right to vote used the social media of their day -writing and selling their own newspapers, chalking their messages on downtown streets, and giving 'silent speeches' in empty store windows," said Ann Lewis, former Director of Communications for President Bill Clinton. "Their courage and creativity won for us the most powerful tool to make change - voting. Now it's up to us to use it!"



our women mean business logo
When The Baltimore
Sun reporter Danae King set out to write a story on the difficulties faced by women entrepreneurs in funding their businesses, she reached out to OWL. Danae interviewed OWL's Communications Director Pat Lewis, who is quoted in the August 16 article responding to the recent Harvard University study that showed "profound and consistent" gender bias among investors, who prefer pitches by male entrepreneurs over identical pitches by female entrepreneurs: 

"It's the way [entrepreneurs] are portrayed," said Pat Lewis, a spokeswoman for OWL, a national organization that advocates for women over age 40.


"An underlying bias against women as entrepreneurs might exist, as entrepreneurs are often portrayed as white males," she said.

"The lack of funding for women also could be related to the lack of female investors as studies show people are 'more likely to give money to someone who looks like [them],'" Lewis said.


"Patience, persistence and perspiration make 
an unbeatable combination for success"

- Napoleon Hill


OWL is the only national nonpartisan organization that focuses solely on issues affecting the economic security and quality of life for the nation's
estimated 78 million women over 40. 

www.owl-national.org

1625 K Street NW, Suite 1275
Washington, D.C.  20006

 202-567-2606